Old Glory shows signs of aging in downtown Apex

The Town of Apex continues to muddle right along according to a news item reported in the Southwest Wake News this week. A June 22, 2010, article in the weekly paper tells about the Town hanging faded American flags along Salem Street in preparation for the annual July 4th downtown events.The flags are hung in advance of each Memorial Day and left up until after Labor Day as a patriotic gesture.

Sounds like a number of the Town leaders have not served in the US Military and don't understand the views of those that do consider hanging US Flags as a patriotic activity to honor those that do serve to protect our country and values. If they had, then they would not hang faded or worn flags for any occasion and would make the effort to replace them as needed.

Folks around town started noticing the faded condition of the flags as soon as they were hung this year. When asked why the Town is using faded flags, the response was that the Town's budget did not allow for replacing the flags under this year's plan.

The budget did not include a $2,100 line item for replacing the flags this year as has been the practice every four years in the past. According to the newly hired Town Spokeswoman, Stacie Galloway, the Town could find some money to buy new flags but this could be used as an opportunity for local citizens to get involved and donate $35 to buy replacement flags. Never mind that the residents are also going through difficult financial times. According to this line of thought by the Town it is better to ask residents to come up with the funds than to find a mere $2,100 to do them all.

By the way - the Town did find a way to carve out a pile of money to hire Mrs. Galloway as a "Town Spokeswoman", a new job cobbled together to provide a spokesperson not needed in the Town staff ranks in the past. After "finding" those funds, the Town hired the person away from neighboring Morrisville where she had been in that role for some time but wanted to move to Apex and have a job here. 

If the Town Council can propose and approve giving Town employees a $1,000 raise in this year's budget, why can't they find a mere $2,100 to replace worn flags and avoid all this? Had the Town given merit raises based on performance that would have only cost the Town taxpayers the amount of the raises for one year. By making these actual raises in salary the cost will be born by residents for years to come. Those raises cost the taxpayers cost Apex $372,373 per year to fund the flat raise, which is part of the $68.7 million 2012 proposed budget. Read about the raises for all employees...

This brings to mind other mind-boggling items brought to you by the Town Council and Staff. One of these is the new pedestrian bridge directly behind the Town Campus...

The 2009 Town Easter Egg Hunt, or rather the lack of one. A couple of years back the Town decided to cancel the annual Easter egg hunt for town children on the grounds of the Town Campus. That decision fell about as flat as Humpty Dumpty did and gave the Town a black eye for some time. The Town management said that the Town had a $750,000 budget shortfall that year and could not provide an egg hunt for the children. The Town Manager's response was to "tell the children that the Town was not using the money for something else, but that the Easter Bunny just could not afford the flight down that year". Yeah, right...

How about the infamous "bridge to nowhere" sitting behind the new Town Campus building? The Town and CSX Railroad teamed up just a few years ago and built a state of the art magnificent $220,000 pedestrian crossing intended to let folks walk to and from the Town Campus to get to downtown activities. To date the bridge still ends beside the old CSX junk parts and trash dump beside the tracks within a hundred yards of the Town Campus and two hundred yards from the Apex Farmers Market that sells fresh food products to consumers. No one seems to care that this bridge ends at the dump, does not connect with a walkway to the Town Campus and parking areas and runs right into a rat infested dumping spot for the railroad.

Tired of CSX engines idling in Apex?

The annual CSX ritual of leaving diesel engines idling all night and day started again before Thanksgiving, 2010. CSX parks 3 or 4 engines and leaves them idling at the downtown Apex depot every day and night starting in late fall each year. The practice will continue well into the warm days of late spring. Even after working hours when the engines are not being used they are left running all night and all weekend with no one in attendance or at the depot.

It is interesting in this era of rising fuel costs and concerns about air pollution that CSX continues this practice with no regard to the effect on the surrounding community. One of the engines is left running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and is not even used. It just sites there running, running and running.

Sit in one of the downtown restaurants or walk along the Salem Street sidewalks and you will quickly discover a loud rumbling that never goes away. And you will often smell the noxious odor of diesel fumes drifting through the air. Eventually you may realize that the rumbling never ends and there are no "quiet times" in the downtown community.

Take that view a few blocks away from the downtown area and you will discover that in any home east or west in a several block radius from the depot has the same constant rumbling to deal with. On many days and nights there is the same noxious odor of diesel fumes in the air surrounding the homes. Imagine having to live in this area and hearing this every day, every winter. Imagine the effect new homeowners moving into homes being built in the Villages of Apex and having to live with the constant background rumble of engines sitting nearby most of the year.

Town Manager Bruce Radford (Email the Apex Town Manager) and Town Council representatives (Email the Apex Town Council) have been asked many times to require CSX officials to turn off the idling engines when they are not being used. The usual response is that the noise level does not show up on the Town's noise level monitoring device (Mr. Radford actually asked the police to measure the noise level a year ago at the intersection of Center and Mason Streets) or that the Town has no control over what CSX does with it's engines. Mr. Radford also says he lived near a train track when growing up and the sound of trains does not bother him. Interesting that he does not live near the area where these engines are left running all night - he chose to live miles away from the sound.

Wasting fuel, polluting the air with diesel fumes and creating a steady engine roar all night and all weekend when the train engines are not in use makes CSX an obviously poor neighbor. The roar of the engines is constant at all hours of the night and is accompanied by a frequent loud hiss of air when a pressure valve releases compressed air every few minutes. The end result is never having quiet at night in residential neighborhoods in the Center-Mason-Hunter Street depot area and beyond. For a good demonstration of the noise problem, try standing two blocks or further away along the sidewalk on Mason Street late at night and you will be amazed at the constant roar of the diesel engines and the hiss of air being released...

If you would like to help eliminate the noise and air pollution, contact the Apex Town Manager (Email the Apex Town Manager) or your Town Council (Email the Apex Town Council) and ask them to put a stop to the noise and pollution. It's a simple matter of courtesy and duty to town residents to require CSX to be a good neighbor and turn the engines off at night and on the weekend. There is no technical reason for diesel engines to be left running all night and it's an obvious waste of energy during a time when the country is trying to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

It is interesting to note that when the Town Manager was asked to investigate what the the City of Raleigh did to implement an ordinance preventing the railroad from leaving engines running all night in the Logan Station area that he says he could not find anyone that knows anything about the ban. Kind of strange that neither Mr. Radford and his counterpart in Raleigh are unable to provide information on the ban put in place by Mayor Charles Meeker several years ago.

Handicap folks - don't park in downtown Apex

If you like to wonder around in Historic Downtown Apex and have a need for a handicap parking space, don't bother to trying to park here...

The Town planners have not seen fit to accommodate the needs of Senior Citizens or handicapped folks.

There is NO handicap parking space along the entire length of Salem Street. There is NO handicap parking space along the entire length of Chatham Street. There is NO handicap parking space in the parking lot in front of the Historic Downtown Depot (home of the Apex Chamber of Commerce). Oh... there is one handicap space on the Center Street side of the Historic Depot building with a sign hidden in a bush so it is not obvious to those needing the space - and if they do find it, they have to park on the sidewalk and block the pathway into the Depot building.

However, there is good news... if you are making a pickup or delivery, you can park right on the corner by Anna's Pizzaria or the corner by Savory's Bakery at the stoplight on Chatham Street. And if you are a shop owner, you can park your vehicle in one of the limited parking spaces along Salem or Chatham.

Whether this is an oversight and poor planning on the part of Town of Apex planners, or just neglect and disrespect of those in need of such parking spaces, its just no way to treat residents.

At the Town of Apex office complex (intersection of Mason and Hunter Streets) you will get an altogether different view of how the Town provides for citizens needing handicap parking spaces. The "Employee of the Month" gets a reserved parking space right by the door at the entrance to the Town's recreation facility. A few handicap spaces have been provided across the entrance driveway so they have to walk further than employees. A number of handicap spaces have been provided in the REAR of the recreation facility with no way to get to them except to drive around the block and enter the lot from Hughes Street!

Unfortunately the downtown parking situation has been greatly exasperated by the Town of Apex taking away most of the parking spaces in the new downtown parking lot across from the new Town Police Station and behind the renovated Mule Exchange building. This leaves customers of downtown stores searching for parking at all hours and often not being able to find a parking space during busy times for merchants.

And of course there is the hidden handicap parking space in Steve Adam's "private" parking lot for the Peak City Grill...

611 Olive Street - Move one house, add three more

Packin 'em in...

That's the deal according to plans for the lot at 611 Olive Street in the historic overlay district of Apex. Sarah Potter bought a small lot a couple of years back and tried to get the Town Planners to change the building ordinances to let her split the lot into two parts - but narrower than current rules permit. And to change the rules to let her move the old house already on the lot to the back just five feet from the edge of the lot.

Saving the old house is required under Town ordinances and tearing it down would force the builder to wait four years to build on the lot. In order to comply with the ordinance and move on with building on the lot, Mrs. Potter has devised a plan to build three more homes on the lot and slip around the Town's building rules.

The plan files with the Town would leave her room to build three more houses on the half-acre lot. Two "main" houses and two "accessory apartments". The accessory apartments would in essence be so called "mother-in-law" apartments or small residences under the control of the main residence owners. The idea of "accessory houses" came from an old concept of having servants quarters or small guest homes on a homeowners property from long ago.

The big issue is that Mrs. Potter has taken advantage of a little known North Carolina law that allows a builder to sub-divide a lot under two acres and cram relatively small houses onto it.

An even bigger issue is that this can and will totally change the look and feel of the lot in one of the town's older historic overlay areas and change the character of the neighborhood.

Town officials have long claimed that the character of these older neighborhoods will be protected and preserved but the Planning Department has refused to stop the builder from packing four homes onto this small lot. The department claims this is being done under a state law that lets a lot owner subdivide small lots and build homes and that the department can't stop the builder.

Take a drive by 611 Olive Street and see how one builder has decided to alter a neighborhood with no concern for the views of the neighbors and the character of the area. Voice your concerns to the Apex Town Council to stop this blatant abuse of the Town's stated objectives of preserving the character of older neighborhoods...

Got signs?

You would think the folks on the Town of Apex planning staff think all town residents are blind as a proverbial bat or are a bunch of dumb clucks.

Building a "bridge to nowhere" used a lot of dollars that could have been spent on a useful project like sidewalks in the older parts of town or the unfinished Villages of Apex park by the tracks on Hughes Street at Town Hall.

The new $207,000 pedestrian CSX track crossing between the Town's office complex and the Duncan Commons office building on Salem Street is so cluttered with signs that it distracts walkers from looking at what they are doing. There are even more signs not visible in this photo warning walkers to not trespass, stay off the tracks, etc.

This crossing in theory allows folks to park at the Town office complex and walk to downtown events and have a more direct path to the historic downtown area. Never mind that there is not a way to get to and from the Town office complex parking area after you cross the tracks. The $207,000 was spent on an impressive array of iron fencing, concrete and lots and lots of signs. And it includes a fenced in observation area that gives a great view of the CSX dumping grounds between the Town office complex and the CSX depot downtown.

Another sign of our discontent

Another sign of discontent with Weatherly "yes men" on the Apex Town Council...

The popular view continues that several Town Council members don't think on their own and need to be replaced. Attend any Council meeting and you will see that members currently running for 2009 re-election sit back and rock in their chairs and in the end vote with Mayor Weatherly for whatever he wants to push through.

The new competing candidates are generally tuned in to the interests of community residents and listen and think about issues affecting lives of all... controlled growth rather than unbridled development, not changing development guidelines to favor builders that pursue infill building in older neighborhoods, finding ways to build sidewalks in all parts of town - not just in new neighborhoods, preventing builders from packing lots with multiple homes and destroying the character of established neighborhoods, etc.

Mount Apex

Know where "Mount Apex" is located?

Right next to the new Thales Academy in the Villages of Apex development.

Now that the "Villages" development has been all but abandoned, this large mound of soil has been left by builders not able or willing to continue developing the "largest single undeveloped parcel of land inside the Town corporate limits".

Like many other projects, the development has fallen victim to the declining economy and most of the land was left stripped bare and undeveloped with a sea of pipes sticking up out of the landscape. Signs around the development offer plots for sale but there are few buyers willing to risk investment for now.

This is now yet another thorn in Mayor Weatherly's crown, pushed through the approval process and advertised heavily in the media as one of the projects to bring many jobs, tax revenues and prosperity to Apex.

Town of Apex vs cars as billboards

An interesting debate has turned up in the 2009 political campaign for Apex Town Council.

A big fuss was made in the News and Observer (Van tiff reroutes Apex campaign) over Scott Lassiter having a van with his candidacy advertised on the side. By the Town's rules and sign folks this is considered as advertising and parking in public places for advertising is prohibited. According to the news article "The town quickly took notice. An Apex zoning official told Lassiter that parking his van on public streets would violate the town's sign ordinance, which requires company vehicles to be kept on private property. The rule prevents businesses from using the streets as free billboard space.".

Has Mr. Lassiter been singled out by other candidates and the media to harass him because he is running for one of the Town Council seats and might knock out one of Mayor Weatherly's "yes men" or "Town Council Sheep"? According to the Town Manager the van is legal and he can continue to use it for his campaign - but not if it is parked on public streets.

The new Gaston's Garage in Laura Duncan Village shopping center has had a minivan parked by the street in its corner parking space (photo top left) ever since the shop has opened - just across from the Apex Town Hall complex!

Another vehicle being used for a billboard is parked each day in the parking lot of the new Peak City Pharmacy in the Historic Downtown Apex. Another advertising wrapped vehicle was used by the Great American Bicycle Company previously located across from the historic Apex Depot in one of the new Salem Street shops until the business closed due to the depressed economy.

No Council Sheep in Apex

No more Council Sheep !

Another "sign" of excitement in the race for Town Council seats in Apex.

The view that Mayor Weatherly has a little band of "yes men" continues to be a topic of discussion around town as several seats open up for the Town Council.

If you believe the Council pushes through proposals and plans that are not in the best interest of the Town then get out and vote for new members for the Council. Now is your chance to change the perception that there are "council sheep" that go along with whatever the Planning Board and Planners bring for consideration...

Scary downtown Apex handicap parking space

Handicapped and in need of a parking space near Apex downtown stores?

The Town Planners have seen fit to provide only TWO handicap parking spaces anywhere near the stores along the Salem Street shopping area. You would think there are no handicap employees in the Planning Department or are unfamiliar with what it is like to be a handicapped driver or passenger.

This one is located in the small parking area across the street from Peak City Grill. For over a year it has had three holes the size of a gallon paint can right in the path of handicap drivers. No one knows why the holes were drilled. There is speculation it was to eventually put a railing by the parking space making it even smaller than a small car can fit into. The space is already so small it is difficult to park in and difficult for passengers to get out of the car on either side.

For the last year this has posed a major safety hazzard for anyone parking in this space.

If this is the only option for handicapped downtown parking it might pay to take your business elsewhere...

Town of Apex administration down on young art

In its usual knee-jerk reaction to anything not explicitly approved by the Town of Apex, the Town's sign enforcer quickly removed a lovely art display recently placed on a utility pole across from the Town Hall and Community Center at the corner of Mason Street and Old Raleigh Road in June, 2008.

This cheerful little gallery of creature drawings was added to the pole over a short period in early June and suddenly disappeared the day after this photo was made. Unfortunately the town's effort signals that the staff doesn't support artist efforts to be creative and add a little color to the local landscape.

The local sign ordinance was meant to prevent signs and posters from littering the roadways but enforcement is sometimes carried too far when signs or displays that mean no harm are ripped down as soon as they are placed due to strict interpretation of the rules. There are legitimate circumstances when local organizations want to tell of barbecue fund raisers, yard sales or other similar events that need community participation to be successful.

Residents generally post signs on utility poles for weekend yard sales to attract potential buyers but soon experience the wrath of the Town's "sign czar". If the Town staff member sees posters along local streets the signs are immediately removed to enforce the strict intent and interpretation of the sign ordinance. This in turn prevents the yard sale host from simple and reasonable advertising that would legitimately provide them with more customers and income.

Town rules on signs may be seen on the Town's website section on ordinances under Sec.8.7.1 /Permitted Signs: Location, Size, and Number. The town's "sign permit form" allows you to apply for and pay a fee to post signs for a variety of purposes. The Town position requires that a citizen or organization purchase a sign permit in order to place even the simplest of signs anywhere around town. Perhaps this should be tempered a bit to allow citizens to post simple yard sale signs for a few days or otherwise advertise personal activities without the requirement of a sign permit. Contact your Town Council representatives if you think the ordinance needs to be revisited.

Zero lot line homes bring considerable danger

Zero lot line homes have gained in popularity in the last couple of years, but the alleged benefits of close living brings a significant increase in the level of danger inherent in the property design. The concept has gained in popularity with home owners that don't have time or don't want to maintain a large yard. The method also provides builders with yet another way to maximize profit and pack more homes onto a given piece of property during development.

Most zero lot line sites permit a home to have one side on the property line and often are built almost as large as the lot. Sometimes two adjacent homes will be built with a firewall between them. Either way there is built in risk that comes with the close proximity of homes built with this construction method.

On two separate occasions, multiple homes have been destroyed or greatly damaged in the same neighborhood in Rolesville, NC, as a direct result of having been built so close together. Early in 2007 and again in August, 2007, two homes were completely destroyed because the intense fire in one caused the other to catch fire and burn to the ground. In both cases additional houses close to the ones that were burned had substantial damage as a direct result of being so close to the houses that were destroyed.

In many cases the homes are so close together and the fires are so intense that firefighters are unable to get close enough to put out the primary fire. And when such a fire breaks out there is almost always significant collateral damage for the homeowners on either side. Adjacent homes will likely have siding melted or burned off the end next to the main fire and will often have further damage requiring major repairs.

In the Town of Apex, you can voice your opinion to help reduce or ban zero-lot-line building techniques by contacting your local Planning Board or Town Council members and telling them to not allow this form of construction. If located elsewhere look up your local community's website and search for Town Council or Planning Board.

News 14 Carolina
August 22, 2007
Ann Forte

ROLESVILLE, N.C. -- Three families are homeless after a fire ripped through their Rolesville homes Tuesday evening. The blaze happened on Ashbrittle Drive in the Village of Rolesville development.

"I was petrified. It was right across the street," recalled neighbor Jeanette Whalen.

Whalen said she heard a popping sound and looked out her window to see her neighbors' homes engulfed in flames.

"Our neighbor was trying to put it out with the hose and trying to get the dogs out," Whalen explained.

The fire spared Whalen's home, but the heat from it caused her siding to buckle. Fire officials believe the fire could have started in the garage of one of the homes that is a complete loss, then it spread to one next door. A third home sustained significant damage.

“The fire got ahead of us. When we got here, it was fully involved, and it's hard to put one out like that," said Rolesville Fire Chief Rodney Privette.

No one was injured, but at least one pet dog was killed in the blaze.

This is the second such fire in the same neighborhood this summer. In June, a propane tank spontaneously combusted. That fire destroyed two homes.

"Ever since we had the fire on the next block, it's been a concern to all of us,” Whalen said, “and I think everyone's been really careful with flammables and stuff because the houses are frankly very close."

Fire investigators will be back on the scene Wednesday to try to determine what sparked the fire.

A few firefighters did get sick from the heat while battling the blaze, but all are said to be doing fine. Original story...